| Average monthly expenses before profit sharing began | $41.25 | |
| Expenses first month after | 36.74 | |
| ” second ” | 43.75 | [324] |
| ” third ” | 41.58 | [325] |
| ” fourth ” | 36.28 |
The plan for carrying on the dining association using the Memorial Hall of Harvard University is essentially one of co-operation, and contains some points that could be tried with advantage elsewhere. The steward receives a fixed salary and in addition a small sum each week for every person who boarded that week at the hall; but this “head money” is proportionately diminished as the average weekly price of board exceeds the amount agreed upon.
At Placid Club, a social club established in the Adirondacks, all fees are prohibited, and the rule is strictly enforced; but the past season (1896) a dividend of ten per cent on the wages received was declared out of the profits of the club, and this was given to all house employees who had remained throughout the season and whose services had been satisfactory to the manager. The financial success of the club depended largely on the efficiency, good-will, and ready co-operation of its employees, and the dividend declared was in recognition of this fact.
Beginnings in a small way have been made elsewhere.[326] They are indeed but beginnings, but they seem to indicate one direction in which progress is possible.
CHAPTER XV
POSSIBLE REMEDIES—EDUCATION IN HOUSEHOLD AFFAIRS
One of the greatest obstacles in the way of improving domestic service has been the prevailing lack of information in regard to household affairs and of careful, systematic education of housekeepers.
Information and education are often used as synonymous terms, but the two words carry with them entirely different ideas. Information concerning household affairs includes a ready knowledge of the history of all household employments and household service, of the economic basis on which the household rests, and of the economic principles on which it is conducted. Much of this information it is now difficult to obtain. Many houses are found in Southern Germany without windows looking towards the public highway. Light and air are admitted through openings in the rear or on a court, but no chance passer-by is permitted to look within. The household has always been constructed on the same plan. No outsider has been permitted to know the percentage of the family income that goes for service, fuel, gas and water-tax, groceries, meats, fruits, and vegetables. In the great majority of households not only is there no disposition to give others the benefit of such information, but the information itself does not exist. Each new generation of housekeepers practically begins its work where the previous generation began. Its only heritage is recipes for desserts, rules for making furniture polish, methods of dealing with moth and mildew, which are handed down like family property from one generation to another in a way as primitive as that in which books were preserved before writing was known. Advance is not thus made, as is evident from the course followed in other occupations that have shown greatest progress. A vast accumulation of knowledge in regard to law has come through the added experience of individual members of the profession. It is said that every lawyer owes a debt of gratitude to his profession which can be paid only by some personal contribution to the sum total of legal knowledge. The constant progress made by the profession of medicine is due to the untiring investigations carried on by its members, the wide publicity given the results of these investigations, and the fact that every discovery made by one member becomes the common property of all. Until every housekeeper is willing to recognize her obligations to her profession and to share with other members the results of her experience, of her acquired information, and of her personal investigations, no progress in household affairs can be expected.
Much of the information to be gained in regard to household affairs is a direct product of education, but education includes much more. Education gives a certain amount of information that is of direct service, and it gives a training that is of indirect but even greater value. The information more immediately gained comes through the study of art, chemistry, economics, physiology, psychology, and history. The study of art should enable the housekeeper to build and furnish her home with taste; of chemistry, to provide for its sanitary construction and for the proper preparation of all food materials; of economics, to manage her household on business principles; of physiology, to study the physical development of her children; of psychology, to observe their mental growth and base their training upon it; of history, to know the progress made in all these departments of knowledge and avoid repeating as experiments what others have advanced beyond the experimental stage. These are the gains on the side of information. The real work of education in supplying the needs of the household is far more important. There are constantly arising in every household emergencies for which the housekeeper is, and must be, totally unprepared as regards the amount of available information she possesses. There are demands made every hour, every moment, for the exercise of reason, judgment, self-control, alertness, observation, accuracy, ingenuity, inventive genius, fertility of resources. The training received by the housekeeper must be such as to prepare her to meet at any moment any emergency that may arise within her home. In all ordinary circumstances she avails herself of the information gained in school or college and through her general reading, but this is of no avail in the decision of questions which arise outside of the field of this information, and could by no possibility be anticipated by it. If progress is to be made in the household, it must be no longer assumed that an establishment can be well managed by a young woman whose reasoning powers have never been cultivated, who has never been taught self-reliance and self-control, who has no conception of accuracy, who has never acquired the habit of observation, and whose inventive genius and fertility of resource are expended in providing for the pleasures of a day.
No improvement is possible in domestic service until every part of the household comes abreast of the progress made outside of the household; until the profession of housekeeping advances, like the so-called learned professions, through the accumulated wisdom of its individual members; until it ceases to be merely a passive recipient of the progress made elsewhere, and becomes on its own part an active, creative force.